Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #8, April, 1999 : --  1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10 -11 -12
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Jay Udall

                 
The Tilelayer

arrives too early,
plays bad seventies radio music too loud,
smokes weed but says Jesus saved him
from smack and burglary,
and tries to save recalcitrant me
over coffee and shredded wheat.

Fifty-six, he says, proud
of veined arms and young man's waist,
hands hard as claws.
You're kidding, I say, though
his brown eyes are old
as light and pain.

When I return that evening
he's already gone
and the bathroom floor has become
a shimmering pattern,
cobalt and bone white,
flawed and fine,
the silent echo
of a single word
in the heart of hard matter.


Copyright © 1999 Jay Udall.

About the poet.

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Issue #8, April, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.